Monday, August 19, 2013

Baltimore Love Project

Yesterday was the American Visionary Museum (seriously, reason enough to move to Baltimore. Amazing, amazing collection. The theme of the temporary exhibit was storytelling, and this dovetails in nicely with many aspects of our trip, including The Child's study of Big History, with its first journal question: what is your story?) and a bit of Fell's Point, where we saw Leroy, the Mayor of Fell's Point (who should, by now, probably be dead, and is not, so must be a special case with the universe, and he was sitting in front of the Daily Grind yesterday, so he must have resolved the issue referenced above), way too many tourists and a semi-gloss sheen over a pretty dumpy place designed mostly for drinking to excess and then sopping it up with a little Jimmy's. But I digress.We are also on a bit of a mission here in Baltimore. Quite accidentally, through the miracle of Facebook, I stumbled upon something called the Baltimore Love Project last year. To date, the project has completed 20 murals with the outline of hands forming the word "Love." A couple months after Dane died, the project put out a call for donations to complete mural #19 at Armistead Gardens Elementary. I donated to the project in Dane's name, and the mural was completed. We visited the mural yesterday.

There will eventually be a plaque with his name on it posted at this mural, so there is already a little part of Dane here in Charm City. He was the advance team, I suppose. I love to know that even though this mural is across town, in an area that is obviously poor and struggling, there exists a visible reminder for everyone in the neighborhood that love can rise above everything. Namaste, my sweet heart.